We at County Battery Services have both Ebay and Amazon sales accounts, we also trade through a website, I have been pondering lately as to whether we should continue to support these tax dodging giants.
The fees for both are extortionate (generally 15% of the gross including VAT). Ebay in particular is very much a Dutch auction with many people trading from home with no real overhead and no guarantee to be upheld. There are people trading internationally with goods being shipped far and wide I would guess mostly imports which a lot of the time must slip under customs noses.
Then you have suppliers that obviously do not know what they are doing goods are being shipped out with what has got to be a loss made on the transaction, if you were to take an item that costs £4.00 + VAT = £4.80 then let us assume the sale price is £9.60 plenty of profit there you may think but actually just 5p
cost | £4.80 | |||
selling | £9.60 | |||
£4.80 | ||||
Ebay + Pay pal Fee @15% | £2.25 | |||
Delivery | £2.50 | |||
£4.75 | ||||
Profit | £0.05 |
Then you see and hear people in shops quoting Ebay and Amazon prices if we are not careful there will be nothing else!